Alpha Queen (Claimed by Wolves 4)

Two people come sprinting out of the woods after him, black smoke pouring from their fingertips. Cold horror washes over me. They’re witches who managed to slip past the sigils at our borders. One man, one woman, both of them with grins on their faces like they think they’ve got the upper hand in the situation because Lawson’s so hurt.

Before any of us can move, the witches attack Lawson with magic. He takes a blow to his hindquarters and falls heavily to the ground, yelping in pain.

Ridge shifts, beginning to sprint to his brother’s side while the magic is still morphing his body from human to wolf. The sounds coming from my mate don’t sound human and they don’t even sound wolf—they’re more like the deep, visceral reaction of a man whose family has been hurt. Trystan, Archer, and Dare do the same, shifting to gallop after him, while I hesitate.

I can fight the witches with magic as long as I stay in human form. My wolf, on the other hand, howls at not being allowed into the fray. But the fact is, I have something in human form my mates don’t, and I have to follow through on that. So I tamp down the angry she-wolf inside me and plant my feet in the dirt, ready for anything.

Lawson isn’t down for the count yet. He rolls to his feet just as my mates reach his side, and he leaps at the witches with a vicious snarl. He latches on to the female witch by the neck and uses his own momentum to drag her to the ground. But her magic intensifies, smoke billowing around her. I can feel the static charge on the air that tells me a spell is imminent.

A blast of energy shoots through the clearing, nearly knocking me off my feet. I throw up a barrier in front of my mates, but Lawson’s too tangled up in the witch for me to protect him too. The spell slams into Lawson, throwing him violently off the witch, though he takes a chunk of her neck with him. He rolls several times, yipping pitifully, and then comes to a stop on the grass and doesn’t move.

I run toward the melee, trying to position myself for a better vantage point to use a spell of my own. My mates dart in and out, snapping at the two witches to drive them away from Lawson’s prone form. I’m terrified one of my men will take a spell they’ll never recover from. Terrified that I won’t be fast enough to protect them.

It’s like Malcolm all over again.

As I’m racing around the fighting group to find a clear shot, several more shifters arrive and join in. There’s chaos for a while—wolves leaping and biting as I throw up barriers and take potshots at the witches with the few defensive spells I know. I’m timid about it—too worried about hitting one of the wolves to really let my witch take over and blast the assholes into the sky.

I manage to get a binding over the male witch, and when the magic stops pouring from him, the wolves seize the moment. He goes down under a pile of shifters, blood spurting, and I turn away because I don’t want to watch them maul him to death. Even knowing that this is my world now, that I’m capable of ripping apart a person with my teeth, I’ve seen enough of this in the past few weeks to last me a lifetime.

The female witch fell while her comrade was being eviscerated. She’s on the ground bleeding to death from the injury Lawson gave her, kicking at the grass and dirt like she can swim away. She screams in terror as the wolves stalk toward her, but the sound cuts off in a strangled cry from the damage wrought to her neck.

As the battle fury dies down, I rein in my witch and let the magic stop pouring from my hands. The black marks on my skin where my scars turn dark with the energy fade away, and I watch them disappear, marveling vaguely at how strange my life has become.

Several of the shifters turn toward the woods, noses in the air and gazes roaming the dim trees. I can’t hear their conversation while I’m in human form, but I imagine they’re looking to see if anyone else is coming. But several long moments pass and no one else comes out of the woods. The coppery scent of blood hangs on the air; it’s the only out-of-place scent I can smell. If any other witches were coming, their scents would hang on the air for all of us to pick up.

While they’re watching the woods, I glance down at the place where Lawson fell. He’s shifted back to human form, and he lies on his side in a patch of soft grass, his back to me.

I rush to his side, panic rising. I don’t know what kind of spell took Lawson down, but coupled with the numerous cuts, bruises, and possible broken bones, he looks far, far beyond my ability to help.

I try anyway, tracing the few healing sigils I’

ve recently learned over his body. Black smoke drifts over his skin, and some of his superficial wounds slow their bleeding.

But it’s not enough.

“Ridge!” I call as I drop to my knees beside Lawson. The man’s eyes flutter at the sound of my voice, and he glances up at me blearily before they close again. His face sinks further into the grass. I gently take hold of his head and ease him onto my lap so he isn’t nearly face-planted in the ground.

Ridge appears, the magic of his shift fading as he gazes down at his brother with pain in his honey-colored eyes. He turns to Trystan and says, “Help me get him up. He needs the healer. Archer, can you lead us there?”

I assumed that the shifters who came to help were Ridge’s, and while two of them are faces I recognize from the guard we took back to North Pack lands with us, the other three are a mix of West and East Pack men. I’m heartened by the obvious show of support from the other packs. Maybe this merger really will work.

Dare places a hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to stay with the others and help them clean up the mess.”

I grimace. We’ve had so many bloody messes on our hands this week. I hate it. “Okay. Be careful.”

Trystan and Ridge carry Lawson between them as Archer leads us through the village. We go to the same healer who treated Dare the day he returned to us half-dead from a witch attack. He was crazy enough to go charging into witch territory, ready to destroy them all with his bare hands—or teeth, I guess—and returned to us in such bad shape that it made my heart stop to look at him. So I know the East Pack healer, Camilla, is one of the best, since she fixed the damage that had been done to him.

She lives in a cabin on the outskirts of town, set back off the road on a tiny plot of land that she clearly tends to with all the love in her heart. A small bed of herbs sits out front, and a side garden boasts plump red tomatoes and vines of beans, peppers, and squash. Camilla opens the front door before Archer can even knock.

“I smelled the blood,” she says by ways of greeting, then her gaze slides past him to where Lawson dangles limply between Trystan and Ridge. “Bring him in.”

Camilla’s wild gray hair is somewhat tamed today by a hair tie, and she’s dressed nicely in clean blue jeans and a pressed shirt—likely because she was at the meeting before Lawson showed up. She nods at me as I step into the cabin, her eyes folding into deep lines as she smiles, revealing slightly crooked front teeth.

I get a wicked sense of deja vu as Ridge and Trystan carry Lawson into the same room where Dare was treated. It’s crazy to me that it wasn’t that long ago, when it feels like a lifetime has passed since that day.

Camilla shoos both men away and bends over the wounded shifter, her hands moving quickly. She lifts his arms and legs, feels around his neck, and pokes at his torso with the first two fingers of both hands. I have no clue what she’s looking for, or even what any of that could tell her about the state of his injuries, but when she rises from her examination, her face says she knows more than most.

Camilla looks at Ridge, answering the unspoken question on his face with a single look.